It was unfortunate that I was unable to attend the Import Alliance Summer Meet this year. I flew out to the event for the first time last year and had a very eye-opening experience. A couple of the others and I had a great time out there and got to meet a lot of great people. Social media outlets give us the opportunity to communicate like never before but it will still never measure up to a face to face encounter. Being able to meet enthusiasts on the other end of the coast gave me a greater appreciation of their scene out there. It is very hard to compare both side because both communities, while into the same hobby, do things very differently than one another and it is really hard to compare. After seeing the cars and meeting the people out there, I wanted to make the return trip out there once again a year later to see what has changed. It would give me the opportunity to reunite with the people I met last year and meet new enthusiasts who knew of The Chronicles. The coverage from last year was just crazy…I had taken nearly 1000 photos from the start of my trip to the very end and the posts ended up being seven parts. 2012 just proved to be too busy to find the time to make the trip out there. That and funds aren’t exactly the greatest with all the other traveling I’ve had to do this year. Not only is work busier, there also seems to be a lot more events going on, car and non-car related. I just recently got back from Hawaii, bought a new camera, did some more traveling,… the timing just wasn’t right. That and the guys didn’t seem to have the funds or time to do it either…

I had heard of the change of venue and location so I was actually very interested to see how the event turned out. From the photos I’ve seen, it looked to be a good event. It’s good to see that Don Napier and crew are doing well out there and I’m happy to see that people are still very excited to be a part of the annual summer event. Maybe next year things will fall into place and we will be able to make the trip out again to check out the event for ourselves. For the 2012 coverage, being that I wasn’t there, I made a call out to enthusiasts from that end of the coast to see if anyone was down to cover it for me. Much like the IA Spring Meet, the outpouring of support was amazing and I now have in my possession a couple of sets of photos from Import Alliance Summer 2012. It’s hard to find the right set of photos because these guys are seeing the event through my eyes so of course things are going to look different. There are cars specifically that I wanted to see that some just didn’t capture on camera so I made the decision to use photos from more than 1 photographer. That way I’m not worrying about the stuff I can’t find and I instead am looking at the event from varying perspectives. The event itself is so massive that I just can’t expect just one guy to capture everything that I want. I could barely pull it off last year and I came home with regret because I knew there were cars that I missed out on. It was my hope that with 3-4 different photographers they can capture the event as a whole. There are a lot of cars that I also DO NOT want to see, haha…so that means that even with so many photos, I can cut it down to only the stuff that I like and that I want to show you guys…

Today we are going to kick it off with some photos from our first guest photographer for the week, Danny Tang. His batch of photos were considerably smaller than the others but they were good shots so I decided to go through them first and give you just a small sample of what IA had to offer. The rest of the week we are going to get much deeper into the event and you’ll even get to see the stuff that I like to see, which is the behind the scenes stuff. I love to see the stuff that is going on before and after the event and I know many of you come to The Chronicles to see just that. Thank you goes out to Danny for taking the time to take the photos and send them my way. It was a completely kind gesture on his part and he didn’t ask for anything in return… I did the post-processing on these photos so if you don’t like them, it’s probably more my fault than Danny Tang’s…haha…Didn’t want every set of photos to look the same so I played around with them…

Enjoy the photos and here we go with Import Alliance Summer Meet 2012….

The major change for this year’s event was the location. The Z-Max Dragway in North Carolina was the host for this year’s event after leaving its usual home in Nashville, Tenn….

Going to go ahead and assume that this RSX with Mugen front bumper was turbocharged… I could be wrong but hey, I wasn’t there…haha…

This Miata from V2Lab became one of my favorite Miata builds of all-time after I spotted it in photos during the IA Spring Meet. If I had gone out to North Carolina, this would have been one of the cars that I would have like to have checked out… lots of “have’s” in that last statement..

EF Civic sedan on some re-barreled Mugen MR5s…

I wasn’t sure how I felt about seeing Work Emitz wheels on an S15 chassis when I first saw photos of this Silvia but I’m not gonna lie, it’s growing on me…Chalk one up for “being different”…

Absolutely loved VIP-styled Honda Odyssey van… Looking lovely… Not really sure where Team NSU came from but they brought out some heat to IA…

Very cool to see a Honda Beagle stateside here in the U.S….I wouldn’t have put Corvette wheels on it but hey, it’s not my car… Beagles for those that don’t know, were 92-95 Civic wagons in Japan. They still retained the EF body style and were basically just re-badged Civic Wagons sold in the mid-90s….

This Honda K-swapped FD3S RX-7 was probably one of the builds that were the talk of the IA summer event…

You guys have absolutely no idea how happy I am when I see a set of Advan Model T5/Model 5s on a Japanese S15 Silvia… Advan T5s (known back in the days as the Model 5) were one of my favorite wheels when I first started messing with cars and it will always hold a special place in my memories of the Japanese car scene. Those wheels on a S15 that I never thought I’d see in the U.S. a decade ago make for a really cool “JDM” feel…

Speaking of uncommon Japanese wheels, check out the VeilSide Andrews Racing V wheels on this yellow Z32 300ZX… very good look for that chassis and “period correct”…

Very nice VIP Infiniti M build on VIP Modular wheels that I have a lot more photos of from my other guest photographers…

Honda CR-Z on some white-faced Work Meister S1s…

Cool to see an Alpina B12 these days… that is, if it’s a real B12. If it is I wonder how many people even noticed it and knew it was an Alpina…

Rear-wheel drive, F20C-swapped Civic coupe that was featured in Honda Tuning last year…

Danyelle Hash’s Mugen Fit on custom M7s…

Not a bad looking CR-Z on blue-faced CCW LM20s…

Honda del Sol on CCW LM16s…

Evo X on CCW LM20s… As you can see, CCWS are still very popular in the east/midwest. I wonder how many cars at IA were rocking the new XXR CCW copies….

R32 Skyline with bronze Nismo LMGT4s…

Kia Optima slammed on Vossen wheels… Gotta admit, it’s not bad… I actually rented one of these recently for a trip to Norcal and it was a pretty nice car. Road noise is terrible in these cars though and I can only imagine how it must be for this Optima now that it has low profile tires on it…

Closing things out for today with a shot of Eric Badis’ custom Acura TL. Eric was kind enough to provide me with a TON of photos from IA and I can’t wait to go through them. He helped me out with photos from the IA Spring meet as well and I’ve enjoyed his work ever since…

Stay tuned..SO MUCH MORE TO COME for IA Summer meet coverage… Thanks for looking…